Some here know that, among my other jobs at school, I'm a kind of live-in sub. I do tech work and teach a few classes. With my job as music director at my church, it's enough to get by and not wear me out too much. The subbing puts a little extra gas in the tank or funds a pizza or two from my favorite place.
The art teacher had to chaperone a lunch-time field trip today and asked me last week if I'd sub for her for one period this afternoon. At the time, she couldn't remember who she had at that hour. I said yes. I found out later that it was first grade. Dum da dumdum DUM.......
Now, I love kids or I wouldn't be a teacher, but I don't do little ones well. When I taught music, I could cope with them for awhile, knowing that soon I'd be able to send them back to someone who would not lose her mind if they asked one more goofy question. I generally won't sub for them now, but for art, music, and gym, I'm not stuck with them the whole day.
The lesson was self-portraits and their drawings were complete. All I had to do was facilitate the coloring. How bad could it be? Originally, the teacher had said they should use colored pencils. (I like that medium because I can control it. I am NOT an artist; I'm a coloring pages kind of gal.) She thought about it and changed her mind: too much running to the pencil sharpener. Fine. It's crayons or markers. Armed with a tub of markers, their impressive drawings, lesson plans, and a shapes bingo game (just in case) I make my way downstairs to face the music, so to speak.
There is a trick to doing faces. After drawing the oval for the head, they need to divide it by drawing lines (I think it's roughly in divisions of one-seventh) across at certain intervals. Those show the level at which eyes, ears, nose, etc. should be. The hardest thing to believe when you're doing this is that the eyes are very nearly in the center. We tend to think of our face as being the entire front of our head. We forget that there is a substantial portion of our head above the hairline.
Anyway, many of these little folks' proportions were great. Coloring was a different matter, however. I could not, for the life of me, convince most of them to use crayons rather than markers. I told them they could get better lights and darks, etc. I told them that if I were doing it I'd use crayon. One of the kids even said she didn't have a "peach" marker to do her skin. I told her that's why using crayons was better. No dice.
All but a few of these otherwise beautiful portraits turned out to be garish caricatures. The good ones used crayons and took their time. The rest - oh my goodness!
Lack of a peach marker didn't slow down one little guy. He made himself orange, really, REALLY orange. I swear he went over and over it until the paper was saturated. Others colored their eyeballs and the whites, too, in the same color. One little guy made his eyes red. When I told him they were supposed to be HIS eyes, he colored over them in blue. He now has purple eyes :-) A little AA girl used markers so that you couldn't even see her black eyes in her brown face. She tried to redo the whole thing on the back of the paper, but she forgot all the dividing lines that show where things go. Staring up at me was a little dark face with eyes where the hair should have been. If real faces were so arranged, we'd have to stand on our heads to see the ground!
The final masterpiece came from a young man who obviously followed directions when he drew his face. The horizontal lines were there and he'd matched up features to the lines. There was, however, a distinct deformation in the oval of his head. An old landlady of mine used to use the term "wopper-jawed" to describe things that were more than a little skewed. The bottom half of this kid's face looked like a study for a Dali painting. In fact, his lower jaw was so far to the left of the rest of his face, I had trouble containing a gasp when I first saw it. Think Dali's melting clocks. Yup, wopper-jawed.
As the kids began to finish their work, one girl asked if she could put in a background. I told them they could do that as long as it WAS background. No solid dark colors that would detract from their face. I got butterflies, flowers, landscapes, and of course, some dark/intense solid color backgrounds. Little Dali had another plan, though. "See this? This is two butterflies. And next I'm going to draw myself in here as a vampire 'cause that what I'm going to be for Halloween!" "Great!" said I, as I considered having him consult with the purple-eyed kid. There are some hills that just aren't worth dying on. Dali is one of them....
I have simply undying admiration for those who can spend all day with really young ones. I cannot imagine myself doing it for more than a few minutes at a time! Hats off to early learning and elementary teachers. I wouldn't trade my rude jr. high kids for your little ones no matter what!
I know this isn't substantive, but I hope it's a good giggle for a Friday night. We need the laughs now and then to get our endorphins pumping.